God Uses Ordinary People: Lydia
Acts 16:14-15
Rev. Brian Bill
8/17/08
I thought I better get out ahead of something that happened to me in Mexico before my team members spill the beans. During our first Sunday in San Juan del Rio, we attended the worship service at the Community Center. The
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In our series on Stewardship we focused on many issues, one of them being hospitality and its role in the life of the church. God is a hospitable God and in our imitation of him it makes logical sense to include hospitality in our personal ministries.

BOLD HOSPITALITY
As we conclude our series on Stewardship we want to look at one final aspect of managing the good gifts God has given to us. Hospitality is an important part of ministering to others with what we have.
If you watch Corner Gas, Canada’s only homegrown successful sit-com, you
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Hospitality was a Spiritual practice for the Celts, and should be for us too!

Celtic Spirituality of Hospitality Monday, June 16, 2008
Earthed Spirituality, God at the Pub
Distinction between entertaining and hospitality,
- entertaining people is showing off your house, and your cooking abilities to them,
- Hospitality is opening your house to them. – welcoming
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Our testimony before others is often seen in how we treat other Christians, and we should never take advantage of each other.

Be Careful
Griffith Baptist Church – 10/12/08
P.M. Service
Text: Nehemiah 5:1-13
Key verse: Nehemiah 5:9 - Also I said, It is not good that ye do: ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies?
Premise: Our testimony before others is often
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Hebrews 13:2
The Stranger is the Gift
I. Stranger in Midst
A. Friend – some years ago
B. Sunday worship service, church like ours
C. Service begun – member of congregation began worship, no pastor yet
D. Man dressed shabbily in a heavy overcoat and wild hair and who could of
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Be hospitable to strangers without grumbling. Open your homes to people and use it as a chance to minister. Have a fervent love for one another despite our faults.

I Peter 4:7 – 10 reads, “But the end of all things is at hand; therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers. And above all tings have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.” Be hospitable to one another without grumbling. As each one has received a gift,
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This is our second in a series I call Short and Sweet
As we look at some of the often forgotten short books in the N.T. It looks at the need for hospitality in today’s world

Christian Hospitality
III John
You may be wondering why I chose 3 John this morning
Why not start with 1 John?
Well I have been known to buck the system
Go against the flow, do things a little differently
No, actually I choose 3 John next because it is similar in a way to Philemon that we
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A look at Priscilla and Aquilla. They weren’t especially gifted, rather average people, but they lived an uncommon life.

UNCOMMONLY AVERAGE
The Cure For The Common Life—Part 1
Bud Villers was a good man. Bud was my neighbor. I grew up beside him until he died when I was in college. Bud helped my dad put a roof on our house, he assisted my dad when they poured concrete sidewalks and porches. My dad helped him
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In the Gospel Lesson for this sermon, it’s a bit hard to tell who the real Blind Beggar is. Is it Bartimaeus or is it the disciples or the rest of the crowd?

Mark 10:46-52
“Will the Real Blind Beggar please Stand Up”
By: Ken Sauer, Pastor of East Ridge United Methodist Church, Chattanooga, TN
There’s an old t-v show called To Tell the Truth where contestants are challenged to figure out which of three or four persons are the
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When God turns up at Abraham's Connect Group in Genesis 18:1, all Abraham sees are THREE MEN. Who were these guys? Prophets? Angels? The Trinity in human form?

Part 2 - Genesis 18:1-15 - ENTERTAINING ANGELS?
Jan and Darryl have always been openly generous people. They make you feel as if they are honoured to have you in their home and nothing is too much trouble for them. Which is just as well because they are our connect group leaders.
Every
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Matthew 19:13-15
“Would You Even be able to Recognize Yourself?”
By: Ken Sauer, Pastor of East Ridge United Methodist Church, Chattanooga, TN
As many of you know, the week before last, I spent some time in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina at a continuing education retreat.
Our main speaker
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As Christ followers, our task is to overcome the hindrances of this world that keep ourselves and others from growing in a relationship with Christ.

What’s keeping you from Christ? What’s keeping you from God? As we think on such questions, we probably all try to find an easy way out. “What’s keeping me from Christ? Well, Christ is not here anymore. God is just like some clockmaker who sets things in motion and then steps away.” But Scripture
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Our experience at shared meals and Christ's stories of common suppers remind us of our call to radical hospitality; our call to invite and welcome all at the Lord's Table!

I have been generously blessed in my thirty years of life. Like so many of you, I can point to different things along the way that were particularly important to me, and perhaps still are, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. One such blessing in my life was the regular evening meals in
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As Christians, our task is not to ignore "the lost," but to seek after them like a shepherd seeks a lost sheep, or a woman her most prized possession. And when any one who is lost is found, we should join in the heavenly celebration!

When I was in elementary school, sometime before my tenth birthday, my grandparents gave to my sister and I each a diamond necklace. Now, these diamond necklaces were nothing fancy; a simple gold chain with a diamond solitaire setting hanging on it. But they were beautiful, and they were special.
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It might make us uncomfortable to acknowledge the existence of our neighbor in need, but as Christians, if we are going to be really hospitable, we cannot just step over the person sitting at our gate as if that person does not even exist!

“We have all seen him. He lies on a pile of newspapers outside a shop doorway, covered with a rough blanket. Perhaps he has a dog with him for safety. People walk past him, or even step over him. He occasionally rattles a few coins in a tin or cup, asking for more. He wasn’t there when
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